


Visibility

by odiko_ptino



Series: Featured Character: Dionysus [1]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Genderqueer, I'm not actually positive which term applies OTL, LGBTQ, M/M, Other, Transgender, Visibility, it's kind of a varied group, positivity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 20:27:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17029455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odiko_ptino/pseuds/odiko_ptino
Summary: Dionysus assembles the first meeting of genderqueer individuals.





	Visibility

Dionysus beams at the awkward assembly of individuals.  “Ahh, excellent!  I’m so glad all of you could make it!”

“I mean… you kinda kidnapped me…” mutters a young woman with thick, wavy dark hair pulled back messily.

At least… the young woman  _might_  be a young woman.  Her appearance is female… but given the members of this particular group, that assumption could easily be wrong.  That’s what the point is supposed to be.  

For her part, Siproites is excited to meet more people with an experience like her own, but the others look a little tense.  She can understand that.  It can be nerve-wracking.

Dionysus smiles kindly at the maybe-kidnapped girl.  “I  _escorted_  you here, because I knew it was at least 50/50 you’d give me the slip by turning into a bird or whatever.”

This prompts a string of irritated-sounding chirps from an actual bird, with lovely tawny feathers, sitting on a branch over another, more mature-looking woman, holding a tiny adorable sleeping baby.  The lady snorts in amusement but doesn’t look over.  She isn’t looking at anything, in fact, just staring into space, and after a moment Siproites realizes the woman is blind.

Dionysus inclines his head to the bird.  “Well, you’re right, that was a little tactless of me.  But since I already set the tactless precedent, let me go a little further and ask why in the fuck you’re – ”

“My apologies.  Am I late?”  A tall, beautiful person of indeterminate gender has arrived.  He/she (they?) is taller than even Lord Dionysus, and has beautiful long black hair tied in a thick, loose braid, draped over their shoulder.  

Dionysus grins and claps their back.  “Not at all, Maph!  We were just starting.”  The tall individual – Maph, apparently, takes a seat near Siproites and smiles at one of the two men seated across from them.  Dionysus claps his hands.

“Right.  That’s everyone – well, since I think most of us don’t know each other, we can start our little meeting with introductions.”

Siproites adores Lord Dionysus, though she knows enough by now (mostly through hearing Lady Artemis gossip) that he isn’t always this calm… or this sober.

(“He’s flamboyant and over-friendly whether he’s a wild drunk or not, so I guess that’s the core Dionysus,” the Lady has said before, and Siproites thinks that’s a fine core personality to have).

In any case, when he takes on his role as the leader of… whatever they’re going to start calling themselves, Dionysus is quite warm and confident. Not a hint of the wildness; not even a suggestion of cruelty he’s supposedly capable of.  Dionysus knows that this little group wouldn’t particularly appreciate it.

He stands up now – a handsome man with dark skin and long, wavy hair that falls perfectly on his shoulders.  A little crown of grape leaves encircles his head; a reminder of his more prominent domain. He’s smiling, the way he nearly always is smiling.  “As you all know, I am Dionysus, Lord of the Vine, master of dramatic arts, god of madness. You might not know about me before all that, when I was a child.  When my mother Semele beheld the mighty Zeus, she was destroyed utterly and cast immediately into the Underworld.”

Everyone sits in shocked and awkward silence as he pauses here.  One man hesitantly speaks.  “We… are surely sorry to hear of your loss, Lord Dionysus…”

“Oh, thank you, Iphis, but no need.  I went and rescued her from the Underworld already.  That was a great story.  Got my first boyfriend then too – well, I should say, my first boyfriend as a man.  ANYWAY, Zeus rescued me from the ashes of my mother.  I was still a fetus so he sewed me into his leg apparently and let me finish growing there.  What a plan, right?  Classic Zeus. He’s practically my second mother!”

Another pause.  “So… Lord Zeus is one of us…?”

“What?  No. Well, maybe.  But we’re talking about me.  Hera was still out ready to kill me so my uncle Hermes had the bright idea to hide me disguised as a girl.  And I spent the first couple decades of my life as a girl, just hanging out with the other girls out in the hills with the nymphs!  I eventually decided I wanted to present myself as a male and I’ve been Lord Dionysus ever since.  But sometimes I switch back over to presenting as a girl when the mood takes me. Okay, next!”

He beams at them expectantly.  Most of the group is still blinking at him in surprise at the revelation.  Siproites hurries to fill in the silence.

“Er, hello everyone!  My name is Siproites.  I always – uh – felt like…” Siproites is surprised at herself.  This has been an accepted fact of her life for a while now, and yet, now that she’s here with an audience of mostly-strangers watching her attentively, she’s feeling shy.  She twists her chiton in her hands.  “W-well, Lady Artemis says I had the ‘heart of a woman.’  All my life… but, uh, everyone else saw me as… as a boy. Because that’s what I was, I guess. Or my body was.  Um.”  

She’s blushing furiously now.  This is harder to talk about nonchalantly than she would have guessed.  “I was out in the woods hunting, and I happened to walk out to a spring where Lady Artemis was bathing-”  There’s a gasp from everyone present at this; Artemis has a certain reputation.  “But she said that when she turned to see who it was, she could tell instantly that I was meant to be a woman, and wasn’t angry at all!  And she changed me into this form and made me a nymph in her retinue! Um, and I’m very happy about it. Thank you very much for listening.”

There’s some scattered applause and she slumps back into her seat.  It’s a relief having said, to people she’s never met before, what her actual story was… and having them accept the truth of it without question.  And they accept it even without Lady Artemis around to scowl threateningly at them!

Dionysus gives her a quick side-hug and a kiss on the cheek.  “Thank you for breaking the ice, Sippy, my dear. All right, who’s next?”

“I had a lot in common with the first part of your story, Lord Dionysus,” one of the two men offers.  He has delicate features and honey-colored curls of hair.  “Not the second part, though, about changing back and forth. My name is Leucippus.  I was born as a girl, but since my mother feared my father would reject a girl, she gave me a boy’s name and raised me as a boy. I didn’t know any better for years. I was always a boy – I played with the other boys and went to school and everything.  But when I hit teenage years, I sort of… well, it was starting to be obvious that I wasn’t a boy.  It was the most horrifying thing… like my body suddenly betrayed me.  I hated it.  I hated looking at myself, hated having to deal with breasts and stuff… my mother was mostly worried someone was going to murder me.  Possibly my father.  So she prayed to Leto and the goddess heard and the next day I woke up with a dick.”

“Oh – that’s exactly what happened to me!” exclaims the other man.  He has deeply tanned skin and close-cropped hair, and his style of clothing marks him as Egyptian.  “My name is Iphis.  I was born a girl but raised as a boy, because my parents couldn’t afford a dowry on a daughter.  I have no idea how long they thought they were going to get away with the ruse. Eventually I met my beloved – Ianthe. We wanted to get married, but we worried, because I was secretly a woman, and there weren’t a lot of successful marriages between two women that we knew of.  But then – well, Lord Hermaphroditus helped us – oh, but it’s not Lord, is it??” he asks, sounding distressed.

The tall person with the braid, sitting next to Siproites, laughs and waves a hand.  “It probably shouldn’t be either, I don’t mind either one.  Honestly, I’m not really a high-ranking enough deity to warrant an honorific.  I’m just an Erote.  But I guess if you have to pick one, I’d rather go with Lady… out of respect to who Salmacis used to be.”

The tension is back again, a little.  The bird chirps in a questioning tone.  The woman with the baby says, “Yes – the gossip is a little… savage.”

“I’m sure.  It was an unusual affair.”  Hermaphroditus sighs.  “I’m… the fusion of two people.  It’s hard to describe it in words – I have to describe the old Hermaphroditus and Salmacis in the third person,’ but… they’re me.  It’s weird.  I’ll do my best.

“Hermaphroditus was – is – the son of Hermes and Aphrodite.  So, pretty clever and good looking.  But I … he… felt incomplete and odd his whole life. He couldn’t tell why, just that he did. He got tired of talking about the masculine things over and over with the boys he knew; it just didn’t interest him. Salmacis was also a little unusual, for a nymph.  Most nymphs are very active and social, and love to run around with Artemis and hunt, and flirt with gods.  Salmacis was more withdrawn.  She didn’t like to leave her spring; didn’t really like to talk to people that much. It wasn’t that she was unfriendly – she just didn’t know how to talk to them.  It didn’t come naturally to me.  To her.

“I’m not sure how we – they – ended up talking to each other. Hermaphroditus must have been wandering the woods hunting.  But they did end up talking and –“

Here, Hermaphroditus pauses.  Their eyes are a little watery.  “Forgive me. I don’t – their conversations are rather personal to me.  I’ll summarize.  They never, ever met anyone who understood each other like they did.  They weren’t lonely when they were with each other. They wanted to stay together forever – but, it wasn’t quite the same as when two people fall in love, exactly. They wanted to be never parted. They wanted to be with each other.

“Lord Dionysus heard our prayer and responded.  It was…. Stressful.  Even though we wanted it.  We both panicked, had doubts, struggled against each other.  When I finally emerged, I was frightened and happy and sad and so, so fucking confused.  But never lonely – never lonely again.  Salmacis and Hermaphroditus were one person, sharing one mind, soul, and body.

“I went with Lord Dionysus to try to sort it all out: who was Salmacis, who was Hermaphroditus, where did they intersect to become me.  In the meantime, the gossip started.  Salmacis and Hermaphroditus had formed a new species of creature, a total joining of two people in love… and the world was obsessed with my genitals.  By the time I was ready to talk about myself, the stories were already being passed around. Very lurid and depressing, as I guess you’ve heard.  But it’s a fool’s errand to try to stop the gossip from spreading.  The best I can do now, is to try to champion the cause of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis and be there for people who… who fall in between two roles, I guess.”

They sigh heavily when they’re done, and Siproites can recognize the relief in having told the story to someone sympathetic.

“It’s very brave of you, Lady Hermaphroditus,” she says.  “To choose do something like that, with no idea what would become of you.  I admire that very much.”

“Eros agrees,” says Dionysus – the first thing he’s said in a while.  He’s watching his small flock of oddballs with shining eyes and the happiest smile on his face.  “And so do I.  What an excellent example of courage and boldness you set, Maph, on how to speak confidently about yourself.”

The girl with messy hair sighs.  “Yeah, yeah, fine.  Guess I’ll get it over with.  Mine’s gonna be really anticlimactic after Hermaphroditus’ story though.”

“That’s the spirit!”

“I’m Mestra.  I’m… not sure I should even be here.  I’m just a girl…. I, uh.  Slept with Poseidon a couple of times.”

Dionysus nods wisely.  “Who hasn’t? He’s  _prolific_.”  The bird utters a short, sardonic-sounding tweet.

Mestra grins a little wolfishly, then continues.  “I laid such exceptionally good pipe that he chose to reward me with the ability to shapeshift.  And I got pretty good at that, too.”

As the others watch in astonishment, she changes into a dog, a cow, a bird (the tawny bird on the branch squawks in surprise), and then into a handsome young man. “…I mean, honestly, I barely waited five minutes before I changed into a man the first time.  You’d do it too, right?  I was dying to see what it was like!”

“And… what did you think?” asks the woman with the baby, sounding curious.

“Fun.  But I didn’t care for it as much as being a woman.”  The woman nods, not looking surprised.  “Anyway, I mostly use this trick to con people and sometimes give my husband a wild night.  But it’s all my choice, you know?  I don’t feel like it’s quite the same situation as yours.  I was a woman from birth, and I’m a woman now.  I just kind of swap in and out every once in a while.”

“It’s not as though there are a lot of rules applying to us,” Dionysus says. “And even if there were rules, my modus operandi would be to burn ‘em.  It doesn’t really matter if you have or haven’t suffered the same as someone else… or if your gender has stayed the same, or changed; and if it was your idea or someone else’s.  There’s not really enough of us in the world to be nit-picky about membership.  We’re just a bunch of people who transcended their gender, you know?  There’s no rules yet, we’re just the blind leading the blind here… please forgive the expression, Tiresias.”

The woman with the baby shrugs, lips quirking up in amusement.  “No offense taken, Lord Dionysus; the sentiment is correct enough.  Not a lot of precedent for any of us to go on.  It’s been fairly enlightening, and I appreciate that.  I didn’t realize, for example, that King Poseidon was capable of such a generous gift.”

At this remark… the tawny bird begins singing.  It sings at length, using many different tones.  Tiresias sits quietly, nodding along, while the rest of them watch the two in awkward silence.

Eventually the bird trails off and Tiresias says “He must have found it droll. That’s lucky.”

The bird begins tweeting again, and finally Mestra breaks in.  “Excuse me, but I have… no idea… what’s going on. Is this bird talking to you?”

Tiresias sits blankly for a moment.  “You’re a bird?!”

“Well, I’m not, I meant – ”

“Right, right,” Tiresias says impatiently.  “I mean Caeneus??”  The bird chirps once.  “Oh, you were getting to that part.  I think you might have buried the lead a little, friend.”

“Is Caeneus the bird’s name?  What do you mean to tell us, you didn’t know you’ve been talking to this bird?”

“How would I know?  I’m blind!”

“But it sounds like a bird?  That is, all I’ve heard is birdsong…”  Iphis puts in, sounding as bewildered as the others.

“Oh, by the gods.  This is awkward.”  Tiresias looks as though she would be rolling her eyes if she could.  Off to the side, Dionysus is snickering.  “I was given the ability to understand the songs of birds, recently.  Apparently it sounds like ordinary speech to me now.”

“You can understand birds’ songs?!” Siproites blurts out.  How lucky is that!!

“Yes.  It was given to me as a gift because Lady Athena felt bad for blinding me.”

“You were blinded??”

“Yes, for coming upon her as she bathed.”

“But you’re…”

“No.  I’m not a woman.  Or, well, best to be truthful: I am, now.  Didn’t used to be.”

The baby in her arms drowses awake and begins to cry.  Tiresias shifts her chiton, parting it to reveal a breast, and coaxes the baby to begin nursing.  “Before I tell my story, though, it seems rude not to acknowledge Caeneus’ tale.  He spoke first, after all.  Caeneus, shall I tell them what you told me?”

The bird ruffles its feathers and chirps once.  This is so obviously a bird’s version of a shrug that it doesn’t need translating.

“Well, the story as Caeneus related it, is that he was born as Caenis – a woman.  Caenis was fairly pretty, and quite popular in her village.  She was constantly being pestered by the men there.  She supposed she was going to have to pick one of them eventually but the idea held no appeal to her.  Not just because she would lose whatever independence she had, but also because the concept of having sex with a man being a fun thing to do, seemed doubtful to her.  As she was moping along the seashore one day, Poseidon appeared and offered to let Caenis sleep with him as an experiment – since he was probably the best lover of all the gods.  If she wasn’t satisfied after a night with him, then she’d know not to bother wasting her time with any men at all.”

Dionysus is laughing at this.  “Uh, since when was Poseidon the best lover of all the gods?  Over Apollo?  Over  _Hermes_?”

Tiresias and Caeneus the bird both shrug.  “I’m only relating what was said, Lord Dionysus.  I would never dream of comparing the prowess of any god over another,” Tiresias says smoothly.  “In any case, Caenis took him up on his offer, and hated it.  Hated every second of it and told him so afterwards.”

There’s a loud collective gasp from the group.  Dionysus has raised his eyebrows.  “Is that why you’re a bird?  Pretty lucky, if so!”

Caeneus tweets in annoyance.  Tiresias continues:  “He says that came later and was barely related.  Poseidon apparently was so caught off guard by the blunt honesty that he only laughed about it.  Caenis amended her story to elaborate that she thought he was probably technically doing a good job of it (and he thought that was funny too) but she just hated the idea of having him inside her – having  _anyone_  inside her.  The thought felt repulsive and wrong, and it wouldn’t matter who it was.  Er, that’s where you left off your story, Caeneus?”

The bird chirps a bit longer, flapping its wings here and there for emphasis at points.  Tiresias jostles the baby a little, to ensure it doesn’t fall asleep while feeding, and repeats the story.  “So Poseidon said since she’d been such a good sport about trying in the first place, and she’d done a good job of putting out, he’d change her into a man so she wouldn’t ever have to do it again.  Caenis became Caeneus, and adored having a dick.  Poseidon suggested giving a test run of the new body, and – actually, Caeneus, I don’t think we need the play by play.  Let’s just say you were happy about it.  Right.  Poseidon also gave Caeneus impenetrable skin, as a freebie at the end, as little joke because of how much he’d hated being penetrated.

“After that, with the extra testosterone and new confidence in never being able to be stabbed or shot in any way, Caeneus joyfully went off to be the best warrior he could be.  He went Ares-style – just starting fights with every ruffian and monster he could find. His impenetrable skin gave him an edge in nearly every battle.  He was actually getting a decent reputation going, but he got into a fight with a bunch of centaurs.  He killed a bunch of them, and they couldn’t get a single blow in to him… so they cheated and attempted to bury him alive beneath a million tons of felled tree trunks.  Poseidon was still fond of his lover, so he rescued him, but he did it by turning him into the bird you see here until he ‘learned to be more responsible and less combative.’  And that is the tale of Caeneus.”  

“Wow… I mean, that’s a pretty amazing story, but damn, if  _Poseidon_ is telling you go be more responsible and less combative, maybe it’s time for a little self-reflection,” Mestra observes.

If it’s possible for a bird to look guilty and sullen at the same time, Caeneus is pulling it off well.

“There’s not always anything useful to learn from reflecting on a god’s punishment,” Tiresias says.  “I, also, am undergoing a two-pronged transformative punishment.”

“Oohh, yeah, let’s hear this,” Dionysus says.  

“I admit, I am curious too… I had only heard of Tiresias, the prophet?  Are you that same person?” asks Iphis.  

“I am.  I was born as a male in Thebes, and was given the gift of prophecy from Lord Apollo. Let me please cut off any jokes in advance: I have heard them before and they have ceased to amuse.  Being clairvoyant and having the ability to predict the future did not and does not give me the ability to foresee all the misfortunes that may fall upon me.  Only if a god chooses to share my fate, will I see it.  And Apollo did not choose to warn me of my own fate; only the fate of others.”

“He’s probably forging you into something special, I bet,” Leucippus says. “Trying to prod you through a bunch of experiences or something.  Lady Leto said that about my experiences, and I barely even suffered, really.”

“So I must be on the way to being something truly amazing, then?” Tiresias asks wryly.  “Perhaps. It has been enlightening.  But damned inconvenient, too.  I was walking along the road on Mount Cyllene, and my walking stick disturbed two snakes copulating.  Zeus and Hera had some kind of investment in these two snakes, and my disruption messed it all up, so Hera turned me into a woman – which seemed kind of non sequitur, but in hindsight I think the snakes may have both been female, so maybe that’s the connection.  Anyway… I made my way through the world as a woman for a while, though I still felt completely like a male on the inside.  Perhaps that’s why Athena reacted the way she did – I approached a spring, intending to wash myself, and Athena was there already, bathing and naked.”

“Ohh, really?  She never lets anyone get a glimpse!  Pan’s been trying for years.  The rest of us are a little too in love with being alive to even try.”

“Well, the two-and-a-half second glance I got as I was walking down to the water revealed a pretty remarkable beauty – but it was the last thing I saw before she whipped around and blinded me on the spot.  I assume she must have sensed I had the soul of a man, and acted on reflex.”

Siproites shifts uncomfortably.  That might have been her fate, too, had Lady Artemis not taken a spare moment to actually look at the girl, first.  

Dionysus is shaking his head.  “Nah, I doubt it, actually.  She probably would have done it if you’d been a man, a woman, or even a bird.  Athena REALLY shuts down peepers of all sorts.”

Tiresias sighs.  “Even less to learn from that experience, then…. Well, in any case, she said she felt bad, seeing me sitting there in a foot of water, blind and bewildered about what the fuck had even just happened.  She couldn’t un-blind me, apparently, but to make up for it she gave me the ability to understand the speech of birds.  It’s useful at times, but most of the time – Caeneus, you might be able to confirm this – birds are mostly yelling about food, sex, or cats.”

Caeneus chirps in agreement.

“So the birdsong got a little less delightful to listen to.  But still, they’re useful sources of information at times.  And being a woman was something I got used to as well.  I became a priestess of Hera at one time, in hopes that I might impress her enough to lift the curse, but while I was doing that I ended up getting pregnant.  This is Manto, my daughter.  Giving birth to her was the weirdest prolonged session of body horror I’ve ever experienced, but I’m quite pleased with the result.”  

Tiresias shows everyone the sleepy baby; they all coo accordingly.  

“Cute kid, Tiresias,” says Dionysus.  “I’m sure it was weird, but there have definitely been weirder ways of giving birth, if it makes you feel any better.”

“Thank you, Lord Dionysus, that is a consolation.”

“And now, we’ve all met each other!”  Dionysus claps his hands together.  “Lovely to have met you all!”

Everyone claps dutifully.  

“So, what’s next on the agenda?” Tiresias asks.  

“Ah!  Right. After the introductions.  What are we going to do next.”  Dionysus considers for a moment, then shrugs.  “Dunno!  I didn’t really have a plan.”

Everyone blinks at him.  “No… plan? We all just… came here to hang out?” Mestra asks.

Dionysus spreads his hands.  “Parties are kind of my specialty, you know?  And anyway, if you hadn’t come to this introduction party, you wouldn’t have met so many kindred spirits, would you?  Mestra, you and Caeneus can swap gossip about Poseidon’s prowess together… or, Tiresias, you can chat with Caeneus about men-being-punished-by the gods- stuff together!”

“My favorite topic of conversation.”

“…and Iphis and Leucippus have a lot in common, they know that now.  And Sippy, you and Iphis can probably talk a bit about what it’s like to feel like you were in the wrong body for so long.  And Hermaphroditus…” Dionysus trails off a bit, stumped here.

Hermaphroditus smiles.  “I don’t have a lot in common with anyone at this point – but, I think you’re right. This has been wonderful just to meet other people who don’t quite fit neatly into their roles, either.  Even if we never even speak of our unique situations again, it will be a relief to have friends who we can speak to, safely. Thank you for this party, Lord Dionysus.”

The others murmur agreement, beginning to smile more and talk as they also see the value in just having a sacred circle of understanding friends.

They mill around for a while afterwards, and as Dionysus predicted, the ice-breaking introductions have launched further conversations.  Siproites thinks Tiresias is very funny – dry and sarcastic.  She’s also a fan of Mestra, who is probably the boldest woman Siproites has ever met outside of Artemis’ Grove.  

Hours later, when everyone has gone their separate ways and promised to keep in touch, Dionysus is escorting Siproites back to the Grove.  

“I think you did a wonderful job today, Lord Dionysus,” Siproites tells him. “You were completely right; it was so nice just to have a group of us – an official group!  Being officially acknowledged makes me feel very… well… I don’t know the word.  But it’s really nice!  And everyone there was very nice, too, I can’t wait for us all to meet again!”

Dionysus bows to her.  “When duty becomes pleasure, sweet Sippy.  I’ve never been happier to fulfill my responsibilities as a god.”


End file.
